Cezar wrote:Give exact examples from the past, give individuals or types of people who represent evolution!

:lol:

I guess you laugh at your self.

No, I laugh because the only right answer, as everyone who understands evolution knows, is: "All individuals, all types of people, by the very fact that they were born"!

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

Cezar wrote:And there is no road, no danger of the return to the monkey I suppose.

Indeed, there's no such thing as "devolution".

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

Cezar wrote:And there is no road, no danger of the return to the monkey I suppose.

Indeed, there's no such thing as "devolution".

But wasn't N saying that a cult of Dionysus in the Orient was leading that population to the stage of the tiger?

And alcoholism brings the man back to previous stages of the culture... is there an end to alcohol? What could stop it today? Isn't Christianity promoting the most liberal life? Will not even Buddhism be felt as "terrorism" by Christianity? Who comes after Iran? China?

And why is black hair a sign of decadence?

And dark skin a sign that "animalism is trying to break through again"?

"and the fact that men give themselves up to blind anger is an indication that their animal nature is still near the surface, and is longing for an opportunity to make its presence felt once more."

Can you say for sure that the black man is a descendant from the ape or from the brown man?

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

My friends, it has been sad to see that aletheia's words seem to have been entirely disregarded. I have hesitated to respond, as I do not know of the effort of dedicated writing will be made worthwhile by dedicated reading on your side. But on waking up today I found the trust that it will. And I trust that this explanation will for now be sufficient. It goes without saying that I ( and aletheia, and others whom I am fortunate to count among my allies and co-workers ) will continue to build and expand this theory. However it is very time consuming and I have a lot of other work to do, so I will in the future prefer to do it in an environment dedicated strictly to this theory and its ramifications, which also means revaluation of other thought systems in the terms of this one. I will be coming back to this thread in the future, so by all means make your thoughts known and formulate your criticisms (or those of others which you think are unaddressed by any of what I or aletheia have written -- we are as 'interchangeable' as craftsmen of the same craft ), but for now this is my last entry. Again, I trust that it will have sufficed to clarify these ideas, at the very least as a useful clarification of the conditions of the will to power, at best as a perspective opening up entirely new philosophical vistas.

"But who feels pleasure?... But who wants power?... Absurd question, if the essence is itself power-will and consequently feelings of pleasure and displeasure! Nonetheless: opposites, obstacles are needed; therefore, relatively, encroaching units..."

It is clearly not an absurd question, as N answers it directly -- units.

What is a unit? How can it be? I ask these questions as it is clear that in a world-image of flux this is not a given. What is the mechanism whereby a unit may exist in the face of flux? This is what my theory addresses.

Units are not explained by positing / observing them. We can only make a unit logically understandable in terms of its relating to other units.

The "form" or "modus" of this relating is the will to power. But how do we understand the term relating itself? This is the subject of my theory.

What is relating? One value standing in proportion to another. This relating means that they exist in a shared value-system. This is how I use the term value.

By self-valuing I mean: by maintaining ones structural nature positing a value system, in which a relation may take place, in which otherness is to be dominated/subjected to as (in terms of) self. Relating without disintegrating requires firm value-positing. Willing to power demands firmness of self-value.

One either holds oneself as a fixed value, or disintegrates. In the latter case, there can be no willing to power.

A self cannot value itself;

I say the contrary - valuing-itself is what makes it a self. Only by consistently positing itself / holding itself as a consistent value -- a standard by which it relates to otherness -- can it exist as a unit and thereby relate.

Chaos can not relate. Self-valuing emerges not out of nothing, but out of chaos. It is crucial to understand the difference. The former (to speak of nothing as if it is a condition from which anything may arise) is irratonal, the latter is not.

Where I break from Nietzsche is where I say that unit-ness is not given, that only chaos, no-thingness (other than nothing-ness), is given. There is no "chaos of sensations" or "chaos of wills" - these are self-contradicting phrases.

This is where I see the contradiction in Nietzsches thought -- on the one hand he states that all is a flux, on the other hand, to explain what this flux is (will to power), he had to posit units. To explain becoming at the root of all being, he has to posit being at the root of becoming.

We may then say that the order is: chaos-beings-flux. Flux is the highest order, for which beings are required.

I am looking into the core of elementary beings/forces/wills. What enables them the persistence of their activity -- their being?

The fact that they can relate to whatever they are not, while maintaining a difference from what they are not. The fact that their relating includes them.

[A] self that values is the same as a subject that wills, that experiences certain things as pleasurable ("valuable") and others as displeasurable ("not valuable"---cf. WP 580). And in WP 1066, Nietzsche suggests that such selves or subjects have always existed: "a certain definite number of centers of force".

Willing is not an explanation of valuing, whereas valuing does explain how will is possible. This is because value is a term bridging the gap between physics and metaphysics. Consider this for a moment. What does value mean? It conveys both the principles of information (which borders on the metaphysical (in the sense of beyond-physical)) and worth (which is physicality as subjectivity). My theory, when understood, makes metaphysics as separate from physics impossible, and logically grounds physicality in subjectivity.

A final example - the proposed apple. The apple values whatever is in the sap or light it receives in terms of itself. It does not value it in terms of a pear or cat. It will incorporate everything it can incorporate in accordance with its self-valuing, and reject everything it can not. It interprets in terms of itself, which means that it uses itself as the standard-value to all valuation/interpreting/overpowering. This consistent using-what-one-is as a standard to expand on, is what I mean by self-valuing.

Consistency is defined as activity. In this way, the revaluation of the static Platonic values is completed.

All weathers are wild, you know what this means? Wolf age, wind age, ~ ᚨOur polity does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others. ~ Thucydidesᛉᛋᛞ

There are innumerable seeds in the earth, innumerably many more than the reckoning of either living or dead trees- the sound of the seeds growing is deafening, and drowns out the sound of all the falling oceans of wood in the forests- but, perhaps, the sound made by the seeds can only be heard with our thoughts. ~ Parodites, 3rd Pentad

The strong do what they can, the weak accept what they must. ~ Thucydides

People do the things they do, if any reason at all, because they have underlying, and often indescribable, values.

Value or rather a standard of valuation being the condition/s of willing, yes.

I see Fixed Cross has explained this idea beautifully and concisely, more so than I have been able to do thus far. To will is to will in terms of something. Willing to power requires the principle offered by value-ontology.

'The daemonic genius is the only thing capable of surviving the odds of existence versus no existence... because of what it empirically tolerates though fundamentally defying it, the deepest existence is satyrical. The grin on a primordial sailor, grim to all things human, his enjoyment in the uncertainty. He knows himself by this very factor. Valuing the uncertainty of the universe as an extension of oneself - this sailor is the primordial being.' [Source]

"But who feels pleasure?... But who wants power?... Absurd question, if the essence is itself power-will and consequently feelings of pleasure and displeasure! Nonetheless: opposites, obstacles are needed; therefore, relatively, encroaching units..."

It is clearly not an absurd question, as N answers it directly -- units.

What is a unit? How can it be? I ask these questions as it is clear that in a world-image of flux this is not a given. What is the mechanism whereby a unit may exist in the face of flux? This is what my theory addresses.

Units are not explained by positing / observing them. We can only make a unit logically understandable in terms of its relating to other units.

The "form" or "modus" of this relating is the will to power. But how do we understand the term relating itself? This is the subject of my theory.

What is relating? One value standing in proportion to another. This relating means that they exist in a shared value-system. This is how I use the term value.

By self-valuing I mean: by maintaining ones structural nature positing a value system, in which a relation may take place, in which otherness is to be dominated/subjected to as (in terms of) self. Relating without disintegrating requires firm value-positing. Willing to power demands firmness of self-value.

So one does all this by maintaining one's structural nature? That's what you're saying here, in any case.

One either holds oneself as a fixed value, or disintegrates. In the latter case, there can be no willing to power.

A self cannot value itself;

I say the contrary - valuing-itself is what makes it a self.

Then what "values itself" before it is a self?...

Only by consistently positing itself / holding itself as a consistent value -- a standard by which it relates to otherness -- can it exist as a unit and thereby relate.

Chaos can not relate. Self-valuing emerges not out of nothing, but out of chaos.

Which originally meant "void", and as a synonym for which you've used the word "no-thingness". So what you're saying is that self-valuing emerges out of a "void" in which no things, no selves, exist. This means it cannot be self-valuing in the reflexive sense, but is a valuing of something by nothing...

It is crucial to understand the difference. The former (to speak of nothing as if it is a condition from which anything may arise) is irratonal, the latter is not.

But in order to circumvene such irrationality, one usually says "nothingness" or something like that. And indeed, you said "no-thingness". Pure flux amounts to nothing.

Where I break from Nietzsche is where I say that unit-ness is not given, that only chaos, no-thingness (other than nothing-ness), is given. There is no "chaos of sensations" or "chaos of wills" - these are self-contradicting phrases.

Unless "chaos" is used simply as an antonym of "order". In Nietzsche's "chaos of sensations", there are already "things", though not objects but subjects; there is no more primordial condition than the chaos of subjects, and it is not prior, but only deeper---more real---than all apparent orders of objects.

This is where I see the contradiction in Nietzsches thought -- on the one hand he states that all is a flux, on the other hand, to explain what this flux is (will to power), he had to posit units. To explain becoming at the root of all being, he has to posit being at the root of becoming.

Indeed. And it's impossible to not do so and still make logical sense. We cannot get rid of "grammar", and Nietzsche accepted that:

"We cease to think when we refuse to do so under the constraint of language; we barely reach the doubt that sees this limitation as a limitation.Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off." (WP 522.)

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

"But who feels pleasure?... But who wants power?... Absurd question, if the essence is itself power-will and consequently feelings of pleasure and displeasure! Nonetheless: opposites, obstacles are needed; therefore, relatively, encroaching units..."

It is clearly not an absurd question, as N answers it directly -- units.

No; "encroaching units" is not an answer to the question "who wants power?", but to the question "what is the will to power?". Said encroaching units are quanta of power-will.

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

"All that philosophers have handled for millennia have been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has escaped from their hands alive. They kill, they stuff, when they worship, these conceptual idolaters - they become a mortal danger to everything when they worship. Death, change, age, as well as procreation and growth, are for them objections - refutations even. What is does not become; what becomes, is not..."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, 1888, 'Reason' in Philosophy, 1

(Reminds me on the team FC Lumpen-proletarian Nietzschean)

"'Willing': means willing an end. 'An end' includes an evaluation. Whence come evaluations ? Is their basis a firm norm, 'pleasant' or 'painful' ? We have invested things with ends and values:... (thus nothing is valuable 'in itself')."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1901, 260

"The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of, he judges 'what harms me, is harmful in itself', he knows himself to be that which in general first accords honour to things, he creates values."

By self-valuing I mean: by maintaining ones structural nature positing a value system, in which a relation may take place, in which otherness is to be dominated/subjected to as (in terms of) self. Relating without disintegrating requires firm value-positing. Willing to power demands firmness of self-value.

So one does all this by maintaining one's structural nature? That's what you're saying here, in any case.

Indeed. Its particular structural nature, its structural integrity.

One either holds oneself as a fixed value, or disintegrates. In the latter case, there can be no willing to power.

A self cannot value itself;

I say the contrary - valuing-itself is what makes it a self.

Then what "values itself" before it is a self?...

Nothing. There is no "before". There is no causality at the root of this, but the self-valuing, which is the structural integrity, the consistency of form in time -- I understand all this to be a random accident.

Strange, indeed, to imagine an accident erupting from no-thingness. As I said, the only ground for this is the lack of its impossibility.

Only by consistently positing itself / holding itself as a consistent value -- a standard by which it relates to otherness -- can it exist as a unit and thereby relate.

Chaos can not relate. Self-valuing emerges not out of nothing, but out of chaos.

Which originally meant "void", and as a synonym for which you've used the word "no-thingness". So what you're saying is that self-valuing emerges out of a "void" in which no things, no selves, exist. This means it cannot be self-valuing in the reflexive sense, but is a valuing of something by nothing...

No, of nothingness by something, thereby making out of the nothingness more somethingness. I see no causality, no temporality at the ground of the first (self-)valuing, only as a result of it.

It is crucial to understand the difference. The former (to speak of nothing as if it is a condition from which anything may arise) is irratonal, the latter is not.

But in order to circumvene such irrationality, one usually says "nothingness" or something like that. And indeed, you said "no-thingness". Pure flux amounts to nothing.

Here we differ in our definitions of "flux". I use it as "stream". A stream necessitates content, mass or energy. Chaos is not energy, as it can not account for any relating, movement, tension, difference.

Where I break from Nietzsche is where I say that unit-ness is not given, that only chaos, no-thingness (other than nothing-ness), is given. There is no "chaos of sensations" or "chaos of wills" - these are self-contradicting phrases.

Unless "chaos" is used simply as an antonym of "order". In Nietzsche's "chaos of sensations", there are already "things", though not objects but subjects; there is no more primordial condition than the chaos of subjects, and it is not prior, but only deeper---more real---than all apparent orders of objects.

Yes. I depart from the view that this is the primordial condition.

This is where I see the contradiction in Nietzsches thought -- on the one hand he states that all is a flux, on the other hand, to explain what this flux is (will to power), he had to posit units. To explain becoming at the root of all being, he has to posit being at the root of becoming.

Indeed. And it's impossible to not do so and still make logical sense. We cannot get rid of "grammar", and Nietzsche accepted that:

And so do I! My theory is the result of being economic with language, of using grammar in an effective way.Its function lies in the specific and exceptional usefulness of the term value.

This word, the seamless dynamic between its noun- and verb-form, is remarkable. Its meaning is crucial to seemingly everything that we can describe and define. So fundamental is it that from its meaning I found I can construct an explanation of the term 'subject', where before I had to see this word as an irreducible.

I hope that I have made another small step to clarification. I realize very well where the difficulty of this theory lies -- in the positing of the arising of a self-valuing, a structural integrity, out of no-thingness. It is only using the term valuing and in using it specifically in the way that I do, that I can conceive of the answer to "why something, and not rather nothing?" in a rational manner.

I want to make this understandable even to the most unyielding sceptic.

All weathers are wild, you know what this means? Wolf age, wind age, ~ ᚨOur polity does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others. ~ Thucydidesᛉᛋᛞ

There are innumerable seeds in the earth, innumerably many more than the reckoning of either living or dead trees- the sound of the seeds growing is deafening, and drowns out the sound of all the falling oceans of wood in the forests- but, perhaps, the sound made by the seeds can only be heard with our thoughts. ~ Parodites, 3rd Pentad

The strong do what they can, the weak accept what they must. ~ Thucydides

"The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of, he judges 'what harms me, is harmful in itself', he knows himself to be that which in general first accords honour to things, he creates values."

All weathers are wild, you know what this means? Wolf age, wind age, ~ ᚨOur polity does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others. ~ Thucydidesᛉᛋᛞ

There are innumerable seeds in the earth, innumerably many more than the reckoning of either living or dead trees- the sound of the seeds growing is deafening, and drowns out the sound of all the falling oceans of wood in the forests- but, perhaps, the sound made by the seeds can only be heard with our thoughts. ~ Parodites, 3rd Pentad

The strong do what they can, the weak accept what they must. ~ Thucydides

I will never completely abandon ILP, as it is the cradle of my philosophy. I use this thread as a bridge from here to a more specifically dedicated location. On this site I will restrict my writing to this thread, as I am not interested in departing from the study of value-ontology. I see a lifetime of work before me, and even that can only be a beginning. I am certain that I am in fact the (type of) philosopher of the future, for whom Nietzsche wrote his prelude.

Cezar -- It was perfectly clear when I asked my simple and necessary question, that you would not be capable of giving an answer. Even if your intellect would be able to exist coherently for a sustained period, you would not be able to answer without confirming that the substance of my theory is necessary even for your little 'Nietzschean' prancings, and it would destroy your pride to admit this.

I have done the work of making this ground conscious, rational.

Perhaps Sauwelios can give the answer to the question I asked of you, and bring all of the ones who resist, persist in resistance to the new and improved, all conservatives, closer to comprehension of why ground-value is necessary for valuing, and why this must necessarily be an activity.

Sauwelios -- Obviously language can not exist without relying on grammar. The question is how we approach grammar. Obviously grammar can not exist without vocabulary. I have begun establishing an order of rank within the domain of vocabulary. The term value, in all its permutations, represents the top.

There is no term which does not rely on this 'faraoan term' (language is a cosmos, an order of rank a pyramid, a farao a 'cosmic architect') for its meaning.

All weathers are wild, you know what this means? Wolf age, wind age, ~ ᚨOur polity does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others. ~ Thucydidesᛉᛋᛞ

There are innumerable seeds in the earth, innumerably many more than the reckoning of either living or dead trees- the sound of the seeds growing is deafening, and drowns out the sound of all the falling oceans of wood in the forests- but, perhaps, the sound made by the seeds can only be heard with our thoughts. ~ Parodites, 3rd Pentad

The strong do what they can, the weak accept what they must. ~ Thucydides

By self-valuing I mean: by maintaining ones structural nature positing a value system, in which a relation may take place, in which otherness is to be dominated/subjected to as (in terms of) self. Relating without disintegrating requires firm value-positing. Willing to power demands firmness of self-value.

So one does all this by maintaining one's structural nature? That's what you're saying here, in any case.

Indeed. Its particular structural nature, its structural integrity.

Then the question is how one maintains that.

I say the contrary - valuing-itself is what makes it a self.

Then what "values itself" before it is a self?...

Nothing. There is no "before". There is no causality at the root of this, but the self-valuing, which is the structural integrity, the consistency of form in time -- I understand all this to be a random accident.

Strange, indeed, to imagine an accident erupting from no-thingness. As I said, the only ground for this is the lack of its impossibility.

And what about the possibility of its never having erupted, but always having existed?

Only by consistently positing itself / holding itself as a consistent value -- a standard by which it relates to otherness -- can it exist as a unit and thereby relate.

Chaos can not relate. Self-valuing emerges not out of nothing, but out of chaos.

Which originally meant "void", and as a synonym for which you've used the word "no-thingness". So what you're saying is that self-valuing emerges out of a "void" in which no things, no selves, exist. This means it cannot be self-valuing in the reflexive sense, but is a valuing of something by nothing...

No, of nothingness by something, thereby making out of the nothingness more somethingness. I see no causality, no temporality at the ground of the first (self-)valuing, only as a result of it.

So then somethingness is at least as fundamental as nothingness.

And is not a first cause necessarily a self-cause?

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

The answer is a 'thing in itself', which means it comes from nothing, it always was in nothing and it can't enter the energy, because the law of the conservation of energy does not allow it. - Nothing can come from nothing! So, there is your part of nothing...

Your thievish attempt to "provoke thought" while you self are disabled to think must fail for that reason.

Cezar wrote:The answer is a 'thing in itself', which means it comes from nothing, it always was in nothing and it can't enter the energy, because the law of the conservation of energy does not allow it.

And what is energy?

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

Sauwelios wrote:So then somethingness is at least as fundamental as nothingness.

No. Nothingness becomes irrelevant.

How?

Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

So one does all this by maintaining one's structural nature? That's what you're saying here, in any case.

Indeed. Its particular structural nature, its structural integrity.

Then the question is how one maintains that.

By it being selected - in first instance, by itself, by its particular activity, namely, selecting.The tendency to maintain structural integrity is selected (as traits are in evolution).Selecting means no active 'picking' of course - but that all that does not have/fit this tendency dies off.

Strange, indeed, to imagine an accident erupting from no-thingness. As I said, the only ground for this is the lack of its impossibility.

And what about the possibility of its never having erupted, but always having existed?

That is essentially only another way of putting it, as in chaos / no-thingness there is no time.This mechanism describes a bit more of "the origin of (being and) time " -- it makes this into a less nonsensical phrase.

Only by consistently positing itself / holding itself as a consistent value -- a standard by which it relates to otherness -- can it exist as a unit and thereby relate.

No, of nothingness by something, thereby making out of the nothingness more somethingness. I see no causality, no temporality at the ground of the first (self-)valuing, only as a result of it.

So then somethingness is at least as fundamental as nothingness.

It is at least as fundamental to its own foundation, certainly. I do not make the claim that nothingness must exist -- that would be illogical, what would exist? I only aim to describe how somethingness can be understood exist in the context of the the notion of nothingness.

"why being, and not rather nothing?"because of its possibility through the existence of a standard.What enables this standard, logically ? This is what I am answering to.

I have rejected the idea that such a fundamental thing can be explained in terms of physics, or in terms of any mere subject of understanding -- rather in terms of understanding itself.

In all other cases, were are merely interpreting an interpretation. By positing valuing (which we understrand because we do it, not because we have defined it) as fundamental, we can interpret the interpreting.

And is not a first cause necessarily a self-cause?

Yes. But it is not 'God', something alien, prior or superior to what we are as humans. What enables the smallest entity to self-cause (the particular way of its self-causation), can be understood as the same activity that we continue as complex organisms.

All weathers are wild, you know what this means? Wolf age, wind age, ~ ᚨOur polity does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others. ~ Thucydidesᛉᛋᛞ

There are innumerable seeds in the earth, innumerably many more than the reckoning of either living or dead trees- the sound of the seeds growing is deafening, and drowns out the sound of all the falling oceans of wood in the forests- but, perhaps, the sound made by the seeds can only be heard with our thoughts. ~ Parodites, 3rd Pentad

The strong do what they can, the weak accept what they must. ~ Thucydides